The idea of controlling someone’s thoughts instills threatening ideas of governments dominating and tracking our every move like robots.
But 18-year-old Hamish Annan is using mind tricks to bring a magic show like no other.
Packed with magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship, it will blow your mind.
Annan is dubbed a psychological illusionist and said he uses psychology and human habits to read into people's actions and essentially, read and control their minds.
He said his show Paradox is not like your average magic show.
"I don’t saw women in half and I don’t have huge fire cages and people swinging from ceilings and doing all of these sorts of grand things that Criss Angel or those sorts of people do. It’s more me and the other person and their thoughts. Because it’s psychology, people sort of fall into certain patterns so I can work out how people are going to respond to different things.
He also said he uses different methods to try to "frame the situation’’ and get his randomly picked guests to fall under his control.
Annan said his show was designed to make sure the audience is highly involved and everyone has a lot of fun.
He said they randomly involve 30-40 members of the audience in each show and this selection process involves chucking a ball out so that there is no chance of rigging the show.
"I’ve heard some pretty funny theories on how I do it," he said.
The theories range from audience rigging to peeking through his thick blindfold or even having a secret peeker on stage for him.
"I try to blur the lines between 'is that a trick or was that real?’," he said.
He is so confident in his ability to read your mind to pick a number, he will be betting an audience member $500 that he can pick their number. A word of advice - he picked mine, three times.
"If I lose my $500 on the first night, we obviously won’t have that in the second show," he quips.
He doesn’t believe that anyone is psychic though, just that people can read into psychological triggers.
"If someone walks up to me and says "what am I thinking of?", there’s no way that I could possibly know. It’s more that when I frame the situation that let’s me pick up things and makes my job easier. So rather than being psychic or a mind reader, there’s some sort of psychological explanation it."
'So you’re giving me information without knowing you’re giving me information," he explained.
There will be two showings of 'Paradox' on the 25th and 26th of September at 7.30pm at the Hamilton Boys High School Hall.
Tickets are $10 for students or $15 for adults and are available fromwww.hamiltonfringe.co.nz.
So if you feel like a mind boggling experience, head along and prepare to be tricked, puzzled and amazed. Just a quick piece of advice: if you meet him in the street, don’t take him on at a friendly game of Paper, Scissors, Rock. He will win.
- © Fairfax NZ News
Hamish Annan | Magician will blow your mind | Stuff.co.nz.
For some people, it still remains difficult to distinguish between the plant’s medicinal and recreational uses. Inhaling the plant’s vapors gets you high, even when that isn’t the primary reason why its being consumed.
It’s not just anti-cannabis critics who have a problem with this issue. Many of the people who consume raw cannabis with a doctor’s recommendation have no interest in getting high. For them, the plant is a safe and natural method of relieving constant pain and constant discomfort, and it’s euphoric and thought befuddling qualities are seen as (unwanted) side effects. Research is now showing benefits from eating or juicing raw cannabis.
One term that is regularly used in conjunction with cannabis is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — the ingredient in marijuana that produces the “high”. Cannabis does contain another beneficial chemical compound called Cannabidiol (CBD) which has been proven medically to help relieve inflammation, convulsions, nausea, as well as inhibit cancer cell growth.
Raw cannabis contains THCA and CBDA, ineffective alkaloids. They must be heated to produce THC and CBD, which in turn produces the “high.” This is the reason for smoking or vaporizing. By eating or juicing raw cannabis in its natural state, there is no “high” to speak of. Drinking fresh-squeezed cannabis juice (similar to wheat grass juice) or eating raw cannabis as a leafy green vegetable is fast becoming a preferred means of consumption for individuals in search health benefits without losing their heads in the clouds.
I personally have not tried this but please let me know your thoughts on this as it is a very interesting topic gaining popularity for a wide variety of health giving properties.
-Dr. Edward F. Group III, DC, ND, DACBN, DABFM
6/19/12 Follow up from Dr. G:
I would like to share with everyone an interesting and informative message I received from Jeffrey C. Raber, Ph.D. (thewercshop.com). Please read below:
NORML Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]
What we don’t hear is celebrity women who are willing to advocate for the legalization and taxation of weed, aka cannabis sativa. But they should, because it’s better for the economy, for the sick and ailing and prescription-addicted, for farmers and for the environment.
Twenty million-plus Americans use marijuana recreationally. And here’s where things get tricky for potential high-profile women advocates. Women have not been shown “what’s in it for them” if they endorse re-legalizing marijuana and industrial hemp. Subsequently, they still feel there’s too much at stake both personally and professionally to publicly stand up for drug policy reform. Even as much of our history as a nation included this plant -- it served us as rope and masts in the ships that won our wars, as the medium for our founders’ message when the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper -- f amous women stay mute when it comes to their relationship to weed.
Greta Gaines is a singer/songwriter who lives in Nashville, TN with her husband and two young sons. She serves on the national board of NORML and on the NORML Women’s Alliance. She has been named in Skunk Magazine’s “100 most important marijuana activists.”
21 July 2012 - Morgan Freeman adds his name to the list of A-list actors who have spoken publicly about their support of marijuana legalization, a point he gave depth to in a recent interview with Newsweek:
"Marijuana! Heavens, oh yeah. It’s just the stupidest law possible, given history. You don’t stop people from doing what they want to do, so forget about making it unlawful. You’re just making criminals out of people who aren’t engaged in criminal activity. And we’re spending zillions of dollars trying to fight a war we can’t win! We could make zillions, just legalize it and tax it like we do liquor. It’s supid."
Famous Friends Of Cannabis - Pot Stars - Celebrity Stoners - Hemp Heroes - News.
2 Dec 2009 - NBC reports: Marilyn Monroe’s latest movie may explain the blonde bombshell’s notoriously bubbly personality. In footage that has just come to light after being forgotten for half a century, the “Some Like it Hot” star is seen puffing on what the owner of the film says is a marijuana joint: "I got it (the pot). It was mine. It was just passed around.
“I had it up in my attic all this time,” says the woman who shot the film, basically a home movie. The friend of Marilyn, who doesn’t want to be named publicly, said she regularly hung out with the starlet in the 50s, and thought nothing to be hanging out with her. “Home movies, that’s all it was,” she told NBCNewYork.com. “It was never a big deal for me.”
The source, younger than Marilyn at the time and now in her late 60s, says she even rolled the doobie for Monroe, but claims the smoking didn’t have that much of an effect on the starlet. “It was all real casual, it was just friends hanging out," she said. "She was the same [after smoking] - a little giggly.”
Source: nbcnewyork.com
The Los Angeles City Council's unanimous vote Tuesday to ban all pot dispensaries was met with a mixture of anger and support.
Medical marijuana activists erupted in jeers after the decision, and police officers were called into the council chambers to quell them. Some activists threatened to sue. Others vowed to draft a ballot initiative to overturn the ban.
"We're not going to make this easy for the city of Los Angeles," said Don Duncan, California director of Americans for Safe Access.
But the ban is supported by some neighborhood activists as well as Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, who criticized most pot shops in the city as "for-profit businesses engaged in the sale of recreational marijuana to healthy young adults."
Under the ban, all of the 762 dispensaries registered in the city will be sent letters ordering them to shut down immediately. Those that don't comply may face legal action from the city.
The new ordinance allows patients and their caregivers to grow and share marijuana in groups of three people or fewer. But activists complain that few patients have the time or skills for that, with one dispensary owner saying it costs at least $5,000 to grow the plant at home.
Councilman Jose Huizar said the ban, which received a last-minute show of support from MayorAntonio Villaraigosa and Beck on Tuesday, will help bring peace to neighborhoods that he says have been tormented by problem dispensaries.
"Relief is on its way," he said, noting that the ban would allow the city to close shops without having to prove that they are violating nuisance or land-use laws, as is the case now.
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